A Far Country, Book 1

, the who were served, and the inefficient, who were separate efficient, neglected; but the ment

n young girls, who blazed forth defiance to all order; derelict men, sodden and hopeless, with scrubby beards; shifty looking burglars and pickpockets. All these I beheld, at first with twinges of pity, later to mass them with the ugly and inevitable with whom society had to deal somehow. Lawyers, after all, must be practical men. I came to know the justices of these police courts, as well as other judg

Weill's carriage ran over a child on its way up-town through one of the poorer districts. The parents, naturally, were frantic, and the coachman was arrested. This was late in the afterno

g or Mr. Fowndes come

new what it meant to have such an office as ours interfere with the affair. I called up the prosecuting attorney, who sent to Monahan's saloon, close by, and procured a release for the

the anxious seats, Justice Garry recognized me and gave me p

er for a moment on the sidewalk outside the cour

the office he insisted on discussing the

" Mr. Weill declared, shakin

tling, "he may save you

Watling is United

t, Weill," he added. "How would a thousand dollars strike you? I've had Paret

at right have these people to let their chi

," he said gently, "suppose it had been your little girl?" The grocer pulle

ses for the street railroa

ges for every careless employee, they would soon be bankrupt through blackmail. But here you have a child whose fath

cite of Mr. Watling's tenderness of heart. I felt, moreover, as if he had done me a personal favour, since it was I who had recommended the compromise. For

efinite promotion by the departure of Larry Weed. He had suddenly developed a weakn

ion of our city to a picture puzzle wherein the dominating figures become visible only after long study is rather inadequate. A better analogy would be the human anatomy: we lawyers, of course, were the brains; the financial and industrial interests the body, helpless without us; the City Hall politicians, the stomach that must continually be fed. All three, law, politics and business, were interdependent, unite

m. Considering our respective temperaments in youth, it is curious that he should have been the first

Hughie," he told me, be

iminat

hat is known as a family man, curiously content with the income he derived from the commission business and with life in general; and he developed a somewhat critical view of the tendencies of the civilization by which he was surrounded. Susan held it also, but she said less about it. In the comfortable but unpretentious house they rented on Cedar Street we had many discussions, after the babies had been put to bed and the door of the living-room closed, in order that our voices might not reach the nursery. Perry Blackwood, now Tom's brother-in-law, was often there. He, too, had lapsed into what I thought was an odd conservatism. Old Josiah, hi

"I hear you've put him up for the Boyne Club, now t

ry would add, sarcasticall

ves out of some hundred thousand dollars. And that this, more than any other act, stood in th

find them," I retorted. "We didn't make them, and we can't change them. Tallan

ke his head e

er Ralph?" I demanded.

nt, e

Tom. "He was born a pir

hance for his salvat

cept the remark

ho by this time had emerged from obscurity as a small deal

Mr. Wading has a clear right to take his cases. As for Grierson, it seems to me that's a matter of giving a dog a bad name. Just because his people weren't known here,

"If the kind of thing we're coming t

as the only one of my boyhood friends who seemed to be able to "deal with conditions as he found them."

heard him inquire with good-natured con

maintained Perry, stoutly,

tions in other countries,-are carried on, in fact, for the sake of business, if our churches are filled with business men and our sky pilots pray for the government, you can't expect heathen individuals like me to do business on a Christian basis,-if there is such a thing. You can make rules for croquet, but not for a game that is based on the natural law of the survival of the fittest. The darned fools in the legislatures try it occasionally, but we all know i

Her mother had died while I was at Cambridge. Reverses did not subdue Mr. Willett's spirits, and the fascination modern "business" had for him seemed to grow in proportion to the misfortunes it had caused him. He moved into a tiny office in the Durrett Building, where he appeared every morning about half-past ten to occupy himself with heaven knows what short cuts to wealth, with prospectuses of companies in Mexico or Central America or some other distant place: once, I remember, it was a

on," he would say. "I think I've got s

, that he had always predicted

nearing thirty, and in spite of her beauty and the rarer distinction that can best be described as breeding, she had never married. Men admired her, but from a distance; she kept them at arm's length, they said: strangers who visited the city invariably picked her out of an assembly and asked who she was; one man from New York who came to visit Ralph and who had been madly in love with her, she had amazed many people by refusing, spurnin

, perhaps, prouder than ever. If she was inaccessible to others, she had the air of being peculiarly inaccessible to me-the more so because some of the superficial relics of our intimacy remained, or rather had been restored. Her very manner of camaraderie seemed paradoxically to increase the distance between us. It piqued me. Had she given me the least encouragement, I am sure I should have responded; and I remember that I used occasio

y, in a valley below the castle perched on the rack above, he had begun life by tending his father's geese. What a contrast to "Steeltown" with its smells and sickening summer heat, to the shanty where Mrs. Scherer took boarders and bent over the wash-tub! She, too, was an immigrant, but lived to hear her native Wagner from her own box at Covent Garde

e, and the bigger the bubble the greater its attraction for investors of hard-earned savings. Outside of this love for financial iridescence, let it be called, Mr. Scherer seemed to care little then for glitter of any sort. Shortly after his elevation to the presidency of the Boyne Iron Works he had been elected a member of the Boyne Club,-an honour of which, some thought, he should have been more sensible; but generally, when in town, he preferred to lunch at a little German restaurant annexed to a saloon, where I used often to find him literally towering above the cloth,-for he was a giant with short legs,-his napkin tucked into his shirt front, engaged in lively conversation with the ministering Heinrich. The chef at the club, Mr. Scherer insisted

nalysis. Nor did I ever venture to talk with him, but held strictly to my role of errand boy,-even after the conviction came over me that he was no longer

s, Mr. Paret!

on, I t

nty, provided, after a certain period of working, the yield and quality should come up to specifications. Mr. S

ng a suggestion, Mr.

?" he asked

enalties might be evaded, while the apparent meaning of the section remained unchanged. In other words, it gave the Boyne Iron Works an advantage tha

ing what he

ded it had your appro

ally, and with the slight German hardening of the v's into whi

the alteration. He

toward me; there could be no doubt about the new attitude of Mr. Scherer, who would often greet me now with a smile and a joke, and sometimes went so far as to ask

s rain before Leonard Dickinson and Grierson and Scherer and that crowd you train with began to talk it down at the Club. Oh, they're very compassionate. I've heard 'em. Dickinson, privately, d

him audaciously. "You h

wasn't in

s a d-d outrage. He couldn't catch up with these rum

would want to admit his s

is that Scherer and the Boyne people want the Ribblevale, and you ought to know it if you don't." He looked at me very hard through the g

ordinary business transaction. The Ribblevale people are having a hard time to keep their heads above water

clined to be noncommittal, althou

sk me, Hughi

astically. "Eat or be eaten that's what enlightened self-interest has come to. After all, Ralph would say, it is nature, the insect world over again

ing with Perry when h

owing to the impossibility of getting certain definite information from the Ribblevale books, which had been taken out of the state. The treasurer, for reasons of his own, remai

is no law in the various states with a sufficient penalty attached

Boyne Club. They had the place to themselves. Fowndes was there also, one leg twisted around the other in familiar fashion, a bor

Hugh," he s

appreciatively and took a chair. Mr. Watling presently suggested kidnapping the Ribblevale treasurer until he should promi

, Watling, we've got to w

"But we're a respectable firm, you know. We h

read in it a query as to the advisability, in my presence, of going too deeply into the question of ways and means. I may have been wrong. At any rate, its sudden effect was to embolden me to g

e to draw up a bill to fit

ding s

mean?" he a

the blood come into my face, bu

the witness to produce the information desired, why not draw up a bill and-and have it passed-" I paused for breath-"imposin

e three of them continued to stare at me. Mr. Watling put the tips of his fingers

y not, Fowndes

an element of risk in such a pr

ey'll say it's special legislation, and the Pilot will print sensational editorials for a few days. But what of it? All of that has happened before. I tell

as to that," observed Fownd

ieve you've hit it, Hugh," he said. "We needn't bother about the powers of the courts in other states. We'll put into this bill an appeal to our court for an order on the clerk to compel the witness to come before the court and testify, and we'll

es wh

oing some

to go some. How a

er's brown eye

to win that s

hich had threatened to elude us was again in view, and not unlikely to fall into our hands. Add to this feeling, on my part, the thrill that it was

h a smile of ironic appreciation at the thought of demagogues adv

properly introduced,

," suggested Fowndes pe

corporation too, if

owndes and Ripon behind it," asserted Mr. Scher

t," Mr. Watling reminded

. Scherer laid a

et him. He will not pe

en we left the Club, and I recall the elation I felt and strove to conceal as I accompanied my chief back to the office. The stenographers and clerks were gone; alone in the library we got down the stat

ours he asked me to cal

Gorse was stil

ler?" Mr. Watling said.

inutes this evening?

rty. Eight o'clock. Al

action, and I had picked it out on the typewriter. As I handed it

od deal of useful knowledge, he

p my eyes open, Mr

credit for some cleverness, I shouldn't have wanted you here. There's only one way to look at-at these matters we have been discussing, my bo

ir," I

but immediately

s bill, I'm going to send you down

odd

Of course there won't be much to do, except to stand by,

and told him I

replied. "Now it's ti

approaching him in the ordinary way through a series of offices. But now, following Mr. Watling through the dimly lighted corridor, we came to a door on which no name was painted, and which was prese

Miller Gorse's power had been coming home to me, and his features stood in my mind for his particular kind of power. He was a tremendous worker, and often

ler," said

dore," repli

aret, of m

ls; the mouth was a crescent, but bowed downwards; the heavy shoulders were rounded. Indeed, the only straight line to be discerned about him was that of his hair, black as bitumen, banged across his forehead; even his polished

er was little different with Mr. Watling than it was with other men. Mr. Wading did not seem to mind

ale affair," he said. "

e no

's all there is to it. I told you so the oth

ained impassive, and drew out the draft of the bill. Mr. Gorse re

," he

ouses and have the governor's sign

sight, Theodore," said Mr. Gors

laughed

ter. Tallant's, and most of the other newspapers in the state, won't print a line about it, and only Socialists and Populists read the Pilot. They're dis

he paper again, and

evale Company, and we can't afford to run any risk of their getting it. It's logically a part of the Boyne interests, as Scherer says, and Dickinson is ready with the money

ent of the Railroad, and had his residence in the other

e any other plan, I wish you'd trot it out. If not, I want a letter to Paul Var

two enter into the transaction. I was impressed more strongly than ever with the fact that a lawsuit was seldom a mere private affair between two persons or corporations, but involved a chain of relationships and nine times out of ten that chain led up to

great rapidity. These he showed to Mr. Watling, who nodded and returned them. They were folded and sealed, and han

is young man?" de

Watling, smiling at me. "T

ess it, with his indefinite, encompassing yet inclusive glance. I had riveted his attention. And from

idea!" he

t," I was putting in,

the son of M

," I

I left untranslated. My excitement was too great to a

walk my chief gave me a

ted with this-legislation. They will probably attribute it to us in the end, but if you're reasonably carefu

d, sir!"

hand and

d. "I know you'll g